Regarding student debt, I have no problem with forgiveness simply because I think college eduction should be free, like it essentially was in the first couple decades after WW2. It’s an investment in our nation’s future that pays back many times within a few decades, and most countries in the world understand that.

At first, I, too had trouble with college debt forgiveness for students. It was especially upsetting that the benefit was skewed to benefit upper and middle class kids who could afford to go to college in the first place. It seemed like a subsidy for the wealthy, like school vouchers for those families that could afford the price of admission at a private school.

But upon reflection, I agree with Buck. An education is not a privilege, it is a right, like health care and a minimum wage, and the nation benefits from it greatly, so it should help pay for it as much as possible. And no, I don’t think everyone should get their education paid at public expense. But everyone who has demonstrated they will benefit from it, by either prior scholastic performance or by entrance examinations, is entitled to have as much of his educational expenses subsidized by public funds as is possible.

Fairly or not, education has become a prerequisite in our society for a decent living. Without a college degree you have little to hope for in life except for a dreary succession of shit jobs and an impoverished old age; unless, of course, you are an entreprefuckingneur, as our Conservative friends love to point out. Even if you learn nothing at University that will actually help you do your job, it serves to divide the workforce into officer and enlisted, owner and renter, management and labor, neckties and denim. Its all about Class, social and economic.

I was raised by a single mother (my father died when I was 4) who, on a secretary’s salary, managed to scrape up enough to send me to a reasonable-tuition state university nearby. With her help, and later, with my own summer jobs and GI bill, I was able to earn the education I needed to have an interesting and prosperous career and work that was honorable and dignified, as well as a comfortable retirement. But not only that, it made me a better citizen and a better person. I not only learned a few useful job skills that benefited me as well as my employers, it also exposed me to the community of learning and scholarship that has been the crowning achievement of Western Civilization since the middle ages. I have an understanding of my country, the world, humanity and history itself that is far more important to me and my country than knowing how to fill in a spreadsheet, use a word processor or write a line of code.

To deny this bounty to those who cannot afford the price of admission, or to those who are forced to mortgage their futures in order to secure a student loan, is not just an error in public policy, it is a vicious crime the society should not tolerate. I know I was lucky, I was born in the sweet spot when a university education for the qualified was relatively cheap (as it still is in most of the developed world). I went to school on the GI Bill, and the professors who taught me were working class kids who won the Second World War and then came home and got their PhDs under the GI Bill. I pay it back by insisting that those who follow me have that same advantage.

I can see why there is such an effort now to ration higher education and to make it harder for the children of the working class to educate themselves. And I can see why there is an effort to minimize the value, prestige and importance of education (except to produce good little corporate drones to populate the cube farms and keyboards of Amerika, LLC.

An educated populace is a danger and a threat to them. Look around at our politics today, can there be any doubt of that?